Although many of are blown away by Nokia’s HAAC (high amplitude audio capture) microphones, which allow their Lumia line to record distortion-free audio (think of a rock concert), there was always one drawback that you may not have known about: mono.

Yup, despite having three microphones on board, the device only processed in mono sound, meaning even though it was distortion free it was still a step behind.

We can now confirm that the Nokia Lumia 1020 fixes this by featuring full-stereo HAAC recording ability. What’s more? It’s part of the Pro Camera suite that other Lumia devices are expected to get, meaning your Lumia 92x can get stereo-recording in the near future.

After all, you have the hardware. Now, Microsoft and Nokia have fixed the software.

I tried recording audio on my 1020 with Audio Recorder Pro. The result turned out to be better than the audio picked up in the Camera Pro app. In the Camera Pro app, when recording videos, the audio always had a low-frequency hum. I tried somebody else's 1020. It had the same hum. Then, I installed Audio Recorder Pro. The stereo recording by Audio Recorder Pro was crystal clear with no hum. It really impressed me how good Nokia 1020 can be. Yet, their default camera app could do better with the audio.

I hope it is going to come to HTC 8x at some point, bit I think I don't have to wait for that. I already thought it was weird that the devices all have 2 microphones but still record in mono. Nokia actually fix it! Although I have no Lumia phone, Nokia still amazes me every day!

WP 8.1 (Blue) is not coming out in 2 months. You're gonna have to freeze yourself for much longer. GDR3 though should be coming out later this year but not in 2 months. What you'll get in about a month or 2 depending on carrier is GDR2 which is currently present in the Lumia 925 and will be available in the Lumia 1020 when it ships.

Nokia Pro Camera will be available for Nokia Lumia 1020 at launch and it will also be coming to all Nokia Lumia PureView smartphones (Lumia 920, 925 and 928), but will require an upgrade to the latest Amber software.

Depends on how reflective processing is done. A smartphone's microphone separation is not much smaller than a human head, and most human's can process stereo sound quite well.

My concern with the 1020 is the lack of the 3rd microphone in the array for active monitoring of levels. So far only the 928 has the three microphone array, the 920/925/1020 are all dual microphone arrays.

it all depends on microphone placement. If the mics are on the same plane facing the same direction then yes, it would be quite terrible. But the 92x phones have 3 mics to work with; one on top, one on bottom... and I honestly don't know where the 3rd one is (maybe on bottom as well?). If using the top and bottom mics for left and right then it should have a similar separation to what the human head has. If it is using a different set then it may not be so great.

Personally I still think that stereo recording on a camera is fairly useless, and there are lots of other goodies coming with Amber and GDR2 that I am excited for, but if they are going to give me stereo audio on my videos I am not exactly going to turn it down and say it is dumb. I'll just enjoy it for what it is.